Day 7

My strategy for perpetual good health has let me down. It appears that, despite my insistence that I am well, I have a cold. Try as I might, there’s no denying the aching head, the coughing, the sneezing, and the snot coming out of my nose.

I was determined, nonetheless, to go to the beach, as it was my last chance to see Emmy, one of the friends Eleni introduced me to this week; I’ve only met her twice, and we’ve exchanged a few words, but she’s lovely, and she’s leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to say goodbye. So when Eleni came to pick me up this afternoon, I put on my bravest face and my hat, and followed her meekly to her car. Halfway there, I had a coughing fit.

            ‘Oh,’ Eleni said, ‘you really are ill.’

            ‘No,’ I said, because I’ve trained myself not to use negative words, lest the universe is listening, ‘not ill. I’m just a different kind of healthy.’

            I can’t tell you whether the look she gave me was one of amusement or pity, but she was certainly not convinced. ‘We’ll just have to install you in the shade,’ she said. I sneezed into my hands, blew my nose, and shuffled on behind her.

I made it as far as the car park, and stopped.

            ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m ill. I’m going home.’ Eleni conceded that this was probably a good idea. I asked her to say goodbye to Emmy from me, and off I went, shuffling all the way back home. Where I took some leftover soup out of the fridge, poured it into a pot, and stuck it in the gas cooker to reheat.

Before I go any further with this tale, I need to share some technical details about my front door:

1)   It is brand new (only just replaced in August) and cost 700 euro.

2)   It has no handle on the outside. If it’s shut, it can only be opened with the key.

3)   If the key is on the inside of the door, it cannot be unlocked from the outside.

4)   It has a tendency to slam shut, even when there is no wind.

So there I was, back in the comfort of my home, with my soup heating up on the cooker, and moments away from a nice, soothing lunch, and my bed. And then I was seized by an urge to add some fresh rosemary to the soup, so I opened the door, as you do, and stepped out and over to the rosemary bush, to pick a sprig or two.

And I heard the click. It didn’t even have the decency to be a slam. Just: click. Such a gentle, polite little sound, with such devastating connotations. My mind instantaneously tallied up all the facts – door shut / key on inside / all windows closed / gas fire on – and produced the following output:

FUCK FUCK FIRE FUCK BREAK DOWN DOOR SEVEN HUNDRED EURO FIRE FUCK

I performed some sort of comedy, headless chicken routine, whereby I did a few circuits of the yard, entirely without purpose or logic, and then ran up to the front door and threw myself against it, shoulder first, like I’ve seen in films. Once, twice, three times. The door rattled, but remained intact. I stared at it, dumbly, rubbed my shoulder, kicked my flip-flops off, and sprinted to Aspasia’s, the nearest house I knew to be occupied. I rushed into her kitchen, surprising the entire family as they were having their Sunday lunch, screaming incoherently about doors, fire and men.

            ‘What?’ Aspasia said, standing up.

            ‘I’m locked out!’ I managed. ‘The fire is on!’

            ‘But I don’t have your key!’ Aspasia cried, desperately. ‘You didn’t give me your key!’

            ‘No key! I need a man to break the door!’

            Aspasia glanced at her son, George, a bulky man in his early forties and my unlikely hero of the day, and gave a nod.

‘Go,’ she commanded. And so poor George was forced to abandon his lunch and dispatched to save the crazy city dweller from her own silly self.

Locked doors come in many forms; this is one of the more traditional.

He didn’t break down the door. Obviously. Being a man possessed of his senses (mine had evidently fled the scene), he assessed the situation calmly and arrived at a somewhat less hysterical conclusion.

‘We’ll just have to break a window,’ he announced, cheerfully. ‘And then you can climb in.’

And, armed like a Sifnos superhero with a long stick and the rug I use as a doormat (saving me, again, from my own silly self: my instinct, to use a rock, would have only led to a mangled hand), he smashed a windowpane, cleared the glass, turned the handle, and let me back in.

What a relief it was, to see the inside of the door again! George stood outside, beaming, and waved all my thanks and apologies away.

‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘These things happen. And if it happens again, you know what to do!’ And with that, he took his leave of me and went back to his mother’s lunch.

But I can’t afford to smash a window every time a recipe calls for rosemary. I’m ringing the carpenter first thing tomorrow, to come and replace the glass and fit a handle on the outside of the door.

As day 7 comes to a close, and I sit here surrounded by balled-up tissues (a sign of my alternative health), I’m trying to draw some sort of positive message from this story, but I’m not sure there is one. Perhaps I could say that sometimes heroes can be found in the most unlikely places. Or that there is always a better way than throwing yourself against a locked door. Or I could just give this up as a bad day and a lesson learned, which is less about doors and more about solitude being challenging in ways that I hadn’t expected or prepared for.

The devil's own rosemary bush.

One thing’s for certain, however: spontaneous cravings for rosemary are not to be trusted. If you ever feel such a thing taking hold of you, do not heed its call. It’s the devil’s work.